


Captain's log

by tardigrada



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, there's one really bad pun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 17:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12869904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigrada/pseuds/tardigrada
Summary: 2k words of Meagan's inner monologue with a couple of bad jokes thrown in. Half of it is about politics, and another half - about keeping the Dreadful Wale afloat.Follows a low chaos playthrough because I'm a softie.





	Captain's log

I knew I'll be too late from the very start. My contacts went silent one by one, then that bitch dragged the old man off the ship like a cat robbing a nest.  
I knew it's gonna be bad. Yet there was the thrill of a race against time and a daring rescue. All this time, patching the ship day by day, planning meals, squeezing as much as possible out of every coin, I've been desperate for something like this to come up.  
I've never met the child empress before. I had this picture in my mind, a young girl dressed in white. I think I saw it in the newspapers after the coronation and she never grew up in my head. Never met Corvo as well, never saw a single photo of him, and yet I knew who I was looking for. A man in his fifties, full of regrets. I know a whole bunch of those. Emily Kaldwin, on the other hand, had been a phantom, a storybook princess to be saved; a scared child from an old photo. So when I see her climb aboard my ship, soaking wet and angry as a wasp nest, I…  
I really expected Corvo.

She is a beautiful young woman. Tall, well-built. Not a child anymore, but… I could have had a daughter her age, had my life gone differently. Don't think I could've brought her up that pissed though, even if I tried.  
I guess surviving two violent coups does it to you.

Who would have thought? I am saving the child empress. Single-handedly, in every possible meaning of the word.

***  
It's a nice morning. The sky is clear. The wind’s good. Empress Emily Kaldwin is perched on my mast like a black stabby seagull.  
When she notices me and my broom, she climbs down and disappears inside the ship. Whatever makes Her Imperial Majesty happy, I guess. It’s probably the last calm moment I’ll have so I’m cleaning up the place. If I die, I’ll die knowing the ship looks decent.  
Rats bemoan old man’s absence. He might be a genius but he's also a slob, and without him there's nobody to forget a half-eaten fish tin under the bed or to stuff apple cores between pipes.  
I'm sure he's fine. He's made some enemies, yes, but he's also a living breathing wonder. The rich are still head over heels for him, even after he’s been laying low for years. Whoever has him won't kill him.  
Surely nobody's stupid enough to do that?

***  
She writes a lot. With our correspondence combined I might as well be running a post office instead of a ship. I thought she was done yesterday but today she greets me with a bunch of letters in her hands and a smudge of ink on her nose.  
That’s a lot of people.  
I heard that many fought to death for her in Dunwall. I don’t know if she’s worth it.

***  
We have a lot of mutual friends with doctor Hypatia. I’m only happy to lend a hand.  
She arrives at dusk with nothing but a change of clothes.  
It’s the first chance I get to take a good look at her. She’s about my age. Her movements are soft but precise. There’s nothing forceful about her, but the strength of her character shines through even the extreme exhaustion. The setting sun gives the gentle sculpt of her face an unearthly look.  
Our mutual friend says half of the medical students are smitten with her. I give her my hand to help her up on board:  
“Doctor Hypatia? I’m Meagan Foster. It's an honour.”  
She doesn’t answer. She looks heartbroken.  
What do I do? I guess it's better to leave her alone. Let her rest.

***  
The Empress of the Isles seems to have stolen my jellied eels and fixed the leak in the engine room. I'm okay with that, I guess.

***  
She saw what Jindosh had done. She saw what that whiny, entitled, cruel hagfish of a man did, and she let him live.  
The only thing keeping me quiet is the thought that this kinda mercy will come back and bite her in her royal ass.

***  
Picked up a newspaper.  
I was wrong.  
This would be a good time to decide not to cross the empress ever, except it's too late for me.

When Anton learns about Jindosh’s fate, he starts cackling at first, explaining how that dreadful electric machine works.  
“He'd never perfect it on his own,” he huffs. “As an engineer he's decent, but natural sciences have always been challenging for… him…”  
Then his face drops.  
Ah. Wasn't it you who taught Jindosh those bloody sciences, you old fool?  
I feel bad for Anton. But I also realize that I feel bad for the old man living on my ship, tinkering with stuff and complaining about drafts. I don't really know how I feel about that guy who Is famous for inventing every cruel trick in city guard’s disposal or for forcing rat guts down someone’s throat for science. Is it even possible to separate the two?  
On the other hand, who am I to judge. At least he's brave enough to live under his own name.  
I wonder, back in the academy, did he screw that hagfish boy? No, scratch that. That's an ugly thought.  
Anton is exceptionally gloomy for the rest of the day. I feel bad for him. I feel bad for myself. I was infatuated with someone once, molding myself to be like him in every possible way. But when he saw his reflection in me he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

***  
I finally catch Lady Emily sneaking out of the kitchen, shoving half of a carrot in her mouth.  
“I was going to make soup.”  
She freezes for a second. Then starts chewing on it with a deafening crunch. I just hope she at least heats up fish preserves before eating them.

***  
Bloodflies escaped because _somebody_ broke their tank. I'm going to commit regicide.

***  
Emily cleared out the bloodflies. The empress may live another day

***  
Ugh, I hate witches.  
It’s good Emilly seems to be doing fine on her own. Her method is… When I think about her lurking in the shadows, going through every scrap of paper, using every bit of overheard conversation to make her judgement, it gives me the creeps.  
I know she does the same to me. The rats are scared of her footsteps. They complain she’s everywhere, climbing high and low, shaking dust off things, going over books and letters with a feather light touch.  
I wish I could say I have nothing to hide.

Emily doesn’t like witches either.  
“They are children,” she says. “Most of them are barely of age.”  
Of course. It’s much harder to pull the wool over the eyes of someone more experienced. Brianna’s witches are too young and lost to see through her bullshit.  
I don’t get Emily’s way of doing things and I don’t get her love for all the stuffed dead things and the old shit in the museum, and what especially I don’t get is how nonchalantly she says, when it comes to Ashworth’s fate:  
“I think I cut her off from the Void somehow.”  
“You did what?!”  
She repeats, as if I didn’t hear her well enough the first time:  
“I think I cut her off from the Void.”  
Anton, seeing the shock on my face, looks extremely proud. Alright, I admit it, she definitely is something, you old fart.

It’s also the first time I see a hint of naivete I expected from her: she thinks Delilah will come for Ashworth.  
“They seem very close,” she says.  
No shit they’re close! That’s basically what you join a coven for! But if I know anything about Delilah, Brianna’s dead to her. All these little girls stumbling over their feet to please her mean nothing to her. She’s so good at faking it, though. So good at making you feel like you are the center of the world. And when she loses interest in you, the whiplash is so strong you'll do anything to regain her favour.  
I wonder what Delilah looks like now.  
Wait, no. I don’t care. She looks like someone who’s going to get what’s coming to her.

***  
The moment Anton feels better he gets back into cooking. Gone are the times when I could enjoy a simple soup. The tyranny of flambee-d fricassees has returned.  
And, of course, he demands an audience and applause. So we kinda start all eating together.

I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this, but today he’s needling Emily about how thin she is, like a fussy grandpa. Her majesty groans:  
“I’m eating fine, Anton.”  
“Yes, Meagan told me about your diet of apples and jellied eels!”  
I join in:  
“I’m pretty sure she ate a raw potato once.”  
“I boiled it!”  
The old man laughs:  
“I can't believe that little lady didn't teach you how to cook.”  
“Callisto did. I'm just really bad at it. She taught me how to sew, too. I hate it, but I’m decent.”  
She picks up a fork but stops before even touching her food and looks us dead in the eye.  
“I might be a bad cook” she says, “but I'm a great stab.”  
I look at Anton. He looks at me.  
“Pardon me?”  
Emily gestures with a fork:  
“Who cooks?”  
“...a cook.”  
“Well, who stabs?”  
I'm not telling to the literal empress of all the goddamn isles her jokes suck. I turn to the old man instead:  
“Did you teach her that?”  
“Of course not! For that alone, Emily, you retroactively deserve to be dethroned.”  
Empress Emily Kaldwin, first of her name, looks pleased as punch and starts scarfing down her dinner.

***  
Delilah’s face, cut out of one of her propaganda posters, looks at us from the board. Jessamine’s older sister, huh? Why not the Outsider’s mom? I ask Emily:  
“What if she speaks the truth?”  
I expected more vitriol from her, but she is more pensive than pissed:  
“She might be. But… Don't you find it strange? The time right before the coronation would have been perfect for her to step forward with her claim to the throne. Corvo world have given an eye and an arm,” she gives me a weird look for some reason, “to have Jessamine’s sister by his side to take the pressure off his child.”  
It's uncanny how she refers to her closest family, as if reciting a history book. Don't they use pet names? Does Corvo call her Her Majesty?  
“She would have gotten her throne. I don't think her claim is easy to prove, but that's not really important. Legitimacy doesn't necessarily make a good ruler, and the only real reason I was proclaimed empress was that everyone else was even less competent.”  
“Than an eleven year old?”  
She doesn’t bat an eye:  
“Yes.”  
She doesn't know that Delilah tried to take her place back then.  
I’m not telling her.

***  
Aramis offers his condolences with sincerity I can never match. Not after all the things I've done.  
Emily shrughs half of them off:  
“I always knew that a lot of news don't reach the Dunwall Tower. Now I know exactly how much. A lot of people lost their lives because of my lack of foresight. It’s my duty to them to set things right.”  
Emily’s tone, her positure, the way she looks at them - oh, she’s giving them the royal treatment. Luka Abele is going _down_.  
She doesn’t say exactly what’s her plan but she’s had this wicked gleam in her eye since the moment Aramis mentioned that the Duke has a body double.  
I think I’ll offer the old man a bet about what she’s gonna do to Abele. I think I’m gonna win.

***  
I won.

***  
Duke has sent people to demand more clockworks from Jindosh. Emily found an audiograph.  
“It’s a relief Jindosh is neutralized,” she moves to put her feet up on the table but catches my stern look and stops. “It would be impossible to deal with a whole army of those blasted things.”  
Her voice loses its edge: “I hope they treat him well.”

***  
“I wonder sometimes exactly how bad my mother had it.”  
Emily’s been cleaning her gear silently for a while. This phrase comes out of the blue.  
“Some people consider her reign a golden age of sorts, but coups don’t come out of nowhere. There’s been something going on below the surface long time before Hiram decided to strike. I’m sure she knew that.”  
Oh, no. By the Void, I don’t want to talk about that.  
“I think that’s why she chose Corvo to be her Royal Protector all the way back. He was as independent as they come, with no loyalties but the ones his heart dictated.”  
She sighs.  
“At least I have a dubious comfort of knowing that I've been sitting on a ticking bomb of a throne since day one. Delila’s coup is far from the first. It's just the first one to succeed.”  
“Just,” I repeat. Cocky brat.  
“It's still a bomb,” she says. “Worst case scenario: I die. The throne? Still not secure. Delilah’s claim to it is dubious, and if she thinks Dunwall wouldn’t dethrone an empress, I have bad news for her.”  
“It takes a lot to take down a witch.”  
“Ugh, don't I know it. Still, no matter how much magic she has, people will eventually demand bread.” She frowns. “Or whale oil.”  
“I'm not listening to another one of your whale oil rants ever again.”  
“Hey, I said exactly that to the parliament, and look where it got me!”  
“Do you find my ship unsatisfactory, your highness?”  
She cracks a smile - a rare sight.  
“There has been a number of miracles involved in my escape from Dunwall and this ship is definitely one of them. I guess,” she turns to me and her expression softens, “there's nothing more important than having the right friends.”  
She could as well have stabbed me in the kidney.

***  
Emily talks to me about irrelevant things sometimes. It’s new. And nice.  
“I really didn't want to be an empress back then,” she says this morning. “I knew I was to become one, whether I wanted it or not, but…”  
I humour her: “Who did you wanna be?”  
“A pirate captain.”  
She looks at my face and adds, as if offering an excuse:  
“I was ten.”  
Was I frowning? I guess I was. Anton’s right, I gotta talk to people more often.  
I nod at my ship and say:  
“Me too.”

***  
I'm going to tell her.


End file.
